Most of the villains in this series have relied on brute force and violence, and it’s been fun reading about Gin taking them all down. Mab’s daughter, Madeline, was introduced at the end of Poison Promise, and is the main villain in Black Widow. Unlike the other villains so far, Madeline doesn’t rely on straightforward attacks, instead coming at Gin and everyone else in a more sneaky, backhanded way.

At the beginning of this book, I found myself really frustrated with some of the characters. I especially was pretty annoyed with Bria – it seemed like she had suddenly become kind of bitchy out of nowhere.

The Spider gives readers of the series a chance to see Gin, Finn, and Fletcher in a much earlier time in their lives, in more depth than the dreams and flashbacks that Gin normally has. It was really cool for me to get to see an early job of Gin’s, and to really get to know how she developed into the character that we met back in Spider’s Bite.

It’s been a long time coming, and there was a brief mention of it in an earlier book, but Heart of Venom finally allows us to see the trauma that Sophia went through to make her who she is, and the accompanying details of the beginning of her and Jo-Jo’s friendship with Fletcher.

After the last book, I was starting to worry that maybe we wouldn’t see much of Owen anymore. Thankfully, though, he’s the narrator of this novella, so the reader gets a chance to see his side of the conflict with Gin and get some insight into what might happen in the future.